It's easy to pile in on the manager when the team get a couple of poor results at a critical point in the season and, on this most recent occasion, Michael Arteta has left himself open to criticism. The team selection was illogical in that it threw the whole team off balance and the changes made throughout the 90 minutes against Brighton smacked of hubris.
Young players are good, young players bring energy and generally allow the fans to have players to get behind but, young players need to be mentored and taken care of. By placing Xhaka at left back it not only exposed Lokonga but sent a message to Tavares, as did the placing of Martinelli and then Pepe into the left sided defensive position, that the manager has no faith in him.
Young players need senior players to step up; something Lacazette is not doing, something that Elneny is not able to do from the bench. Young players need to play and when they play well, retain their place, but when they don't, another young player needs to be given a chance. This is not happening.
Injuries are something that every team has to deal with and when the squad has been thinned out at the start of the year provisions still need to be in place for back ups, but if those back ups aren't trusted to play you have to wonder about decision making in the January transfer window.
Michael Arteta is the least experienced manager operating in the top half of the league so one would hope he is able to reflect and learn. He has to as Arsenal are running out of games. He needs to be prepared to really use his squad, he's kept Holding, Pepe, Tavares, Nketiah therefore he needs to be willing to use them when necessary to achieve the results needed. He needs to be prepared to drop players who aren't functioning, he needs to look at the balance of the team, he needs to refocus and get the players to compartmentalise the last two defeats and push the tempo on saturday at St Marys.
I have been saying for a long time now that I feel he is doing a god job but can only take the club so far, that distance may be determined by other factors as there are three teams who are operating at a different level and a couple of clubs around us on the up, his challenge will not only be reestablishing The Arsenal in the elite but competing for that spot with a set of teams who all want to be big players.
Will Arteta turn out to be a good regional manager or a CEO? only time and squad investment will tell, but one thing I think is clear is that he needs to take this club back into Europe this season or he may be facing an unclear future.
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so I said...